When the European Commissioner for Immigration visits Malta on Friday, he would be able to see the lack of solidarity in the EU's asylum policy, Nationalist MEP Simon Busuttil told the European Parliament yesterday.

Speaking during a sitting in which the commissioner, Jacques Barrot, was participating, Dr Busuttil said that while solidarity was introduced in the Immigration Pact signed in October, only France had offered to accept immigrants from Malta.

He said that the European Parliament had already allocated 5 million euros for this mechanism to work and asked Mr Barrot what the Commission was doing for this aim.

The Commission, he said, should present a European programme which permitted the transfer of immigrants from a country that was burdened disproportionately to another European country.

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